Saturday, March 05, 2011

Federal gun-smuggling surveillance program backfires.

Disturbing recent news reports suggest that federal agents knowingly let arms buyers for Mexican drug cartels smuggle high-powered weaponry across the border, with deadly consequences for U.S. law enforcers. Mexican leaders have warned for years that lax U.S. enforcement of gun smuggling was fueling border-area violence, but they should be particularly disturbed to learn that, in some cases, weapons were being deliberately allowed to flow southward.

CBS News reported last week about Project Gunrunner, an operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to track how weapons purchased in U.S. gun stores reached Mexican drug gangs. Had Gunrunner been a limited, tightly focused study, it might have provided useful intelligence to shut down major gun-smuggling operations. Instead, it went badly awry.

On Dec. 14, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona. The serial numbers of two AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene were traced to a smuggler under ATF surveillance.

In North Texas, at the same time, ATF agents were conducting another Project Gunrunner surveillance operation involving brothers Otilio and Ranferi Osorio. ATF and Drug Enforcement Administration officials organized the November undercover transfer of about 40 weapons believed to be destined for a Mexican drug cartel. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata was gunned down Feb. 15 in Mexico, ballistics tests and a partial serial number linked one weapon used in the shooting to Otilio Osorio. He was not arrested until Monday.

ATF Dallas division spokesman Tom Crowley said that at no time did weapons in the North Texas operation “walk into Mexico.” All 40 guns were seized in Laredo, he said.

Still, the fact that Osorio and others known to have smuggling connections remained free adds to our concern about Project Gunrunner.

As President Barack Obama and his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderón, made clear Thursday in Washington, cooperation is growing between the two nations to curtail gun smuggling. Both sides understand the deadly consequences when American guns reach murderous Mexican drug gangs.

ATF’s enthusiasm in expanding the fight is laudable. Its tactics, however, need radical revision. There’s no telling how many people died from Project Gunrunner weapons. ATF must provide a full accounting of the operation and explain what, exactly, were the benefits reaped from a program that appears to have directly fed Mexico’s gun violence and may well have contributed to two American law enforcement deaths.

The boys at Sipsey Street Irregulars are the ones that have been on this shit since Day 1 and refused to let go of it, not allowing the media and Obamas' government to sweep it under the rug.So now the ATF, long out of control, can officially add the murder of Border Patrolman Brian Terry and God knows how many innocent Mexican citizens to the victims of Ruby Ridge and Waco - and those are just the well known ones.I'm thinking that maybe it's time to disband and fully investigate all of their abuses and please dear God in heaven, please let be Obama be directly connected to it.Thanks to Sipsey Street Irregulars for bulldogging it and Dallas News for being the first major paper to pick it up.

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